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HEASOXS Foil THANKSGIVING. 



DISCO XJ±iSE 



Coiigrcgatiaiial C^urc| an^ ^orietg, 



sto(;kbridge. mass.. 



ON THE DAY OF 



A N N U A L T H A N K S G I V 1 N G, 

NOVEMBER 21, 







BY NATHANIEL H. EGGLESTON. 



PITTSFIELD, MASS. 

HI':nRY ClIICKKKING, PRINTKR. 

1861. 






I 



/ 

REASONS FOU THANKSGIVING. 
DISCOURSE 



C0iigrcgation;il C|nKJj mi^ ^ocielg, 



STOOKBRIDGE, MASS., 



ON THE DAY OP 



ANNUAL THANKSGIVING, 

NOVEMBER 21, 1861. 




/ ^^^^Ih;^' 



BY NATHANIEL H. EGGLESTON. 



PITTSFIELD, MASS. 

HENRY CHICKERING, PRINTER. 

1861. 



.1 

£73 



Stockbridge, December 2, 1861. 
Hav. Nathaniel H. Eggleston, 

Dear Sir : — The undersigned, having listened with great interest and satis- 
faction to the appropriate and patriotic discourse delivered by you on the day 
of QUI ;a-,e annual Thanksgiving, would respectfully request you to furnish 
them with a copy for publication, that wider circulation may be given to th« 
important sentnnents therein contained, and a fresh impulse, based on religion* 
principle, be imparted both to our love of liberty and to our patriotism. 

Respectfully yours, 

DANIEL KIMBALL, 

D. R. WILLIAMS, 
■ C. M. OWEN, 

WILLIAM WHITNEY, 
JARED REID, 
WILLIAM DARBE, 
EGBERT SEYMOUR, 
MARSHALL' WARNER, 

E. H. OWEN, 
THOS. O. HURLBUT. 



Stockbridge, December 2, 1861. 

SEKtIiEMEN : — 

Yielding to your judgment as to the desirableness of publishing ray dis- 
•ourse on the recent day of Thanksgiving, I submit it to your disposal. 

Sincerely yours, 

N. H. EGGLESTON. 
Messrs. Kimball, Owen, Williams, and others. 



REASO^sS FOR THANKSGIVING. 



1 CHRONICLES 29: 13. 

NOW IIIERKFORE, OUK GOD, AVK THANK THEE, AND PRAISE THY GLOUIODS 

NAME. 



From the earliest times, the people of this Common- 
wealth have been accustomed to devote one day in the 
year to the remembrance of God's goodness to them, and 
to special thanksgiving to Ilim therefor. It has naturally 
fallen too at that season of the year, when the gathered 
harvests offer their unmistakable proofs of the reward that 
has attended the labor of men, in the chief and most essen- 
tial calling of life, that of Husbandry. Even less than 
Puritan or Pilgrim piety might be moved, as Autumn 
wheels her loaded products into the storehouses provided 
for them, to lift up the heart with special thanks to Ilim 
who givetli seed-time and harvest, and who measures out 
the rain, the sunshine and the dew. 

And never, perhaps, had we more urgent reasons for ob- 
serving a day of public and general thanksgiving than now. 
Let me lead your thoughts to the consideration of some 
of these, that, so far as possible, I may help you to makt; 
the da}^ what it should be. 

1. I need but to mention, what your minds will all be 
likely to dwell upon as a matter to be grateful for, the gen- 
eral HeaUhfuliiess which has characterized the past year. 



Sickness and death are the attendants of human life in 
this world. They are visitants of our households year by- 
year. We cannot hope wholly to escape their dread pres- 
ence. And in this particular community, we may perhaps 
mourn the loss of a more than usual number by death. The 
seats of some precious ones will be sadly vacant to-day by 
the household hearth and the household table. Let us 
take care that we do not allow our griefs to hide God's 
many mercies and favors. Our sorrows will not make this 
day of joy and thanksgiving unwelcome, if we remember 
that " whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." 

But ia our Commonwealth and in the country at large, 
the year has been one of healthfulness. No epidemic, no 
special sickness has anywhere prevailed. And this, if we 
consider it but for a moment, will appear as an ample cause 
of thanksgiving to Him who holds our being in his hands. 
What exemption from suffering, what relief from anxious 
care and watching on the part of friends, what augmented 
ability to engage in the various pursuits of life and to en- 
joy the results of life's manifold activities is implied in this 
fact of a year's general Healthfulness? ''^ 

2. Another manifest occasion of gratitude is found in the 
fact, that we have had Propitious Seasons for the Husband- 
man. 

Agriculture, as it is the first, so it is the most essen- 
tial employment of man. As the inspired Preacher says, 
"The profit of the earth is for all : The king himself is 
served by the field." Agriculture is that occupation upon 
which we are all dependent. There is no one so high ia 
station but that he must acknowledge his need of the ser- 
vice of the ground. Royalty itself, not less than the plain- 
est and roughest cultivator of the soil, is dependent for 
daily bread and for the material comforts of life, upon the 
vulgar earth. The white hand of delicacy or of aflPected 
refinement, that wears its kids on all occasions, and never 



feels its way beyond the porfmiicd atmosphere of fashionable 
sak)oiis, is only one remove, whenever its owner sits down 
to eat and drink, from the bronze-faced husbandman who 
" drives his team afiehi," or the veriest Milesian who digs 
his ditches. 

And all arts and trades, all industries, all traffic, are 
based upon Agriculture. Without it they would not, could 
not, be. It is only as man is first able to gain from the 
ground a surplus of that which will support life, that there 
is time or room for the arts to arise which bestow comfort 
and refinement upon that life. So also it is the exchange 
of the products of the soil in different climates which gives 
origin to commerce. The swift ships that whiten every 
sea, tly upon this errand. * The rail-ways that shoot their 
iron threads over kingdoms and continents, are built to 
bear the accumulating products of agriculture, or are built, 
as is sometimes the case, where as yet there are almost no 
tillers of the soil, because of the assured possibilities of 
agriculture. The great rail-way system of the West, is 
preeminently the creation of Agriculture. The surplus 
of the wheat fields and corn fields of that region, is what is 
to throng those highways with cars and make the prairies 
echo w^ith their almost continuous roll. It is this 
surplus of the husbandman's work which is to call for the 
return of manufactured goods from the workshops of New 
England and of Europe. And it is this in the main, 
which is to send the throng of human beings, from day to 
day over those lines of travel. The husbandman goes to 
market his grain or his stock. The grain-dealer, the for- 
warder, the dry goods merchant, the grocer, the manuflic- 
turer, the banker, all find business and occasion to travel, 
because the earth yields her increase, and all are hastening 
on their various errands as fast as steam can carry them, 
because the husbandman has first been prospered in his 
work. And so the sun as it shines and the rain as it falls 



6 

indue season, aiiil in right proportion upon the dull insen- 
sate earth, set all this system of transit and of traffic in 
motion. 

Nor is this all. Those fertile fields of the West have 
been largely iustruraeiital in constructing the chief rail-way 
of our own State. The growing wheat and corn of that 
great agricultural region, have called for this high-way 
over which to convey the surplus stores which may supply 
the wants of our densely populated manufacturing districts, 
and even those across the ocean. 

How true, therefore, that the profit of the earth is for all. 
These lines of rail-way, more than a thousand miles in 
length, and a multitude of ships plowing the ocean, have 
all been built because man is dependent, first of all, upon 
the Earth. They all teach us the importance of the primal 
' /interest and employment of mamand all this busy hum and 
/ whirl of transit and of trade, these transactions of commerce 
and the exchange, are, in one view, the exhibition of the 
value and dignity of the Husbandman's calling. Let that 
fail to be prosperous, and the wheels of trafSc move more 
slowly or are made to stand still; the fleet ships of com- 
merce fold their white wings ; the hardy sailors are dis- 
charged ; a thousand iorms of productive industry are 
checked ; and wide-spread suffering ensues. 

We have special reason for thankfulness to-day, that du- 
ring the past year, the seasons have been propitious to the 
husbandman. 

We were just recovering from a state of financial embar- 
rassment, occasioned in part by mismanagement and in part 
by a deficient productiveness of our great western grain- 
fields during two successive years, when the rebellion, 
which dates nearly from the beginning of the present year, 
swept away from the hands of those loyal to the govern- 
ment hundreds of millions of wealth in the form of debts 
due froin those in revolt, created a panic almost throughout 



the country, paralyzed trade and manufactures, depreciated 
the value of property of every kind, and at the same time 
occasioned the necessity of a greatly increased expenditure 
on tlu! part of the government. It w:is a fearful complica- 
tion of evils- Cotton had been proclaimed King, and in 
the interest of Slaver?/ seemed about to rule with tyrannous 
and ruinous severity. But God had provided better things 
for us, and in the midst of his justly-deserved rebukes for 
our sins, remembered mercy, and would not allow us to be 
without the tokens of his goodness which might lead our 
hearts to him in penitence and gratitude. Sitting high in 
his supremacy alike over nations and all material forces and 
agencies, he had so disposed the powers of nature, so gov- 
erned the winds, the frosts, the rains and the sun-shine, that 
while in other lands, — and especially in those whose gov- 
ernments would be likely to take advantage of the trouble 
occasioned to us by the unnatural and wicked revolt, — 
there should be a more than usual necessity of seeking food 
from abroad, our own barns and warehouses should be full. 
The workmen in the factories of England and France can 
live without cotton, but they cannot without food. And 
now, as we look where we feared to see a ruthless despot- 
ism lording it over us, or breaking us asunder as a nation, 
and treading the rights and the hopes of humanity in the 
dust, behold Corn quietly mounts the throne, and pushing 
away the black usurper, stretches out his golden scepter, 
fringed with the tassels which the summer suns and the 
sprites of the air and of the soil have embroidered upon it, 
and commands peace between us and other lands. What 
no president or board of financiers could do, this vicegerent 
of God bids the nations over the water come and pour their 
hoarded gold into our hands that we m;iy have it to equip 
our army and use it to crush the rebellion which they 
would bo but too glad to see pi-osper, that they might use 
it for their own selfish aggrandizement, and against the 



God-given rights of man. The money needed by the gov- 
ernment in its exigency is abundantly supplied. The 
wheels of traffic can not roll fast enough to biing the 
surplus of our grain-fields to market. Roads and canals 
are choked with the burden which the soil has poured out 
upon them. The machineries of ten thousand factories 
upon our streams are making the hills echo again with 
their welcome sound. Industry springs to life once more. 
The currents of trade feel the beneficent impulse. All 
arts, all occupations, are revived and quickened. And as 
though this were not enough, God has sealed up for us the 
eaves of the polar cold and drawn out the autumnal 
warmth to its utmost length. More than realizing the 
fabled descent of Jove to Danlfe in a golden shower, He has 
coined the very sunbeams into gold for us, making each 
added day of autumn a contribution of millions to the 
wealth of the husbandman and so to the wealth and com- 
fort of all. 

Blind are our eyes and hard are our hearts if we do not 
see and feel the special goodness of God to us now in the 
Seasons, and if we are not moved with humble, tearful grat- 
itude to render thanks to him on this account. 

3. I name, as another occasion of thanksgiving to-day, 
our Aneestrt/. 

By a happy thoughtfulness, our excellent Governor, who 
has proved himself a man for the times and for the place 
which he occupies, has designated as the time for our public 
thanksgiving the day on which the first settlers of Massa- 
chusetts and of New England, not j^et landed from their 
frail and tempest-tossed vessel, entered into a compact of 
civil government, the first compact of government known 
in the world's history. It would be well if this appointment 
should be taken as a precedent, and the anniversary of 
that signing of the compact in the cabin of the Alayflower 
J^ be henceforth enshrined in memory by a fortunate con- 
nection with our sacred annual New England festival. 



9 

The character of a State or Nation depends much upon 
the character of those who lay its foundations; more bj^far, 
usually, than upon those who are active and influential in 
it at any subsequent period. The features impressed up- 
on a people when in the plastic, formative state, harden into 
abiding permanency as the body politic becomes consoli- 
dated with age. And so Lord Bacon rightly classes 
among the most eminent and noble of men, the "Founders 
of States." 

If ours had been a different ancestry, how different would 
have been our history and how different our character and 
condition to-day. It is not going beyond the warrant of 
truth to say that not only does Massachusetts, but the 
whole country, owe its civil and religious liberty to the 
character of the founders of New England, and these w^ere 
largely the founders first of Massachusetts. It is freely 
admitted now that it was the religious and moral element 
of the New England colonies which carried us triumphant- 
ly through the struggle for independence. Not only did 
these colonies furnish the needful amount of men and mon- 
ey,* far more than was furnished by all the other colo- 
nies, but they furnished the sturdy moral principle and ar- 
dent love of liberty which made each musket think as well 
as speak, and gave to every dollar contributed to the pub- 
lic funds the weight of a talent. 

If, for example, our ancestors had been of the stamp of 
the first settlers of Virginia and the Carolinas, or New Eng- 
land had been settled in the same spirit and upon the same 
principles as those colonies, the whole country would, very 
likely, have been a dependency of the British Crown to 
this day. We should have had our orders of nobility, our 

* The force brought into the field during the Revolutionary War, was, in 
round numbers. 289,500 men, ot which Massachusetts furnished 83,000, whUe 
all the Southern States together supplied only 67,000. Massachusetts furnish- 
ed one soldier to every 5.7 of her inhabitants, the Southern States one to every 
26.8 of theirs. ' 



10 

established religion regulated by state law, the many taxed 
and oppressed for the benefit of the few, and no such in- 
telligence, culture and freedom as are now our distinction.^ 

Massachusetts was founded by a company persecuted and 
exiled for their love of liberty and their religious opinions. 
The Carolinas, and the same is true largely of Virginia, 
were founded by companies of the rapacious Courtiers of 
the profligate Stuarts. 

The motive which sent the New England pilgrims to these 
shores was religious. Gov. Bradford, in his histor}^ of Ply- 
mouth Colony, names as one, ''-but not the least" of the rea- 
sons which led our forefathers to this country, "A great hope 
and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, 
or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagat- 
ing and advancing the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in 
these remote parts of the world." And Davenport, the 
master-spirit of the New Haven Colony, has left behind him 
a treatise, which bears evidence of having been written at 
the beginning of the settlement at Quinnipiac, entitled "A 
discourse about civil government in a New Plantation 
whose design is Religion." 

Nothing could be more unequivocal than this. 

The object of the settlement of the Southern Colonies, 
on the contrary, was gain. Those who originated and for- 
warded the settlement of the Carolinas were animated by 
the same spirit which had animated the Spaniards under 
Pizarro and Cortez in their raid upon Mexico. 

North Carolina has, indeed, always had a better character 

* It is well known that South Carolina hesitated to join in the declaration of 
Independence, once voting against it, and finally giving her vote for it formal- 
ly and for the sake of a seeming unaniiuitj'. During the Revolution her Commis- 
sioners made a proposition to the British Commander which an eminent histo- 
rian has pronounced " equivalent to an offer to return to the British Crown." 
John Adams wrote, in 1776, " All our misfortunes arise from a single source, 
the resistance of the Southern Colonies to Republican Government. — Sumner. 

Baron de Kalb is reported as saying to General Marion, "I thought that 
British tj-ranny would have sent great numbers of the South Carolinians to join 
our arms ; but so far from it, they are all, we are told, running to take British 
protections." — Weems' Life of Marion. 



11 

than either South Carolina or Virginia, which may be at- 
tributed in part to the fact that a leaven of liberty and 
equality was hidden, though in more than three measures 
of meal, almost from the beginning, by a company of colon- 
ists from Massachusetts who, as early as 1G60 or 1661, 
established themselves upon the Cape Fear River, and to 
the further fact that North Carolina became a place of ref- 
uge for a portion of the inhabitants of Virginia, who fled 
from the enforcement of conformity to the Episcopal ritual, 
which was already the established religion of that colony. 

The o-overnment founded bv our ancestors was free 
and popular from the beginning. Accordingly before they 
landed from the Mayflower, and on the day of which this is the 
anniversary, recognizing the equal rights of all and abjuring 
all claims of privilege or rank, they entered into a solemn 
compact of civil government for the purpose of securing 
those rights. The document is so remarkable in its histor- 
ical connections, and withal so brief, that I will quote it 
entire. 

"In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are un- 
derwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, 
King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France 
and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, &c., having under- 
taken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Chridian 
faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant 
the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do, by 
these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of 
God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves 
togetl;ier into a civil body politic, for our better ordering 
and preservation, and the furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; 
and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such 
just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offi- 
ces, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and 
convenient for the general goi)d of the colony ; unto which 
we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness 



12 

whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names, at Cape 
Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our 
sovereign lord. King James, of England, France and Ire- 
land, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the 54;th — anno dom- 
ini 1620." 

Here it will be observed that the avowed objects of their 
migration are the '"glory of God and advancement of the 
Christian faith" and subordinately to that, the honor of their 
King and country, and that they propose by virtue of this 
compact to enact and frame "just and equal laws" for the 
"general good." 

And, in passing, I will say, that while here for the first 
time we have realized the fiction of the social compact, of 
which so much has been made by some writers upon gov- 
ernment, the framers of this compact did not by their act 
lend the least countenance to the notion that government 
depends for its authority upon the consent or agreement of 
the governed, or that men in forming government give up 
certain of their original rights, which now become the 
ground and measure of power and authority in the govern- 
ment. They only held it to be their province and privilege 
to designate who should exercise among them and over them 
the divine power and authority of government. So Robin- 
son, in his letter of advice to the company, when about to 
embark for the New World, says, "whereas you are to be- 
come a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil gov- 
ernment, and are not furnished with any persons of special 
eminency above the rest, to be chosen by you into office of 
government, let your wisdom and godliness appear not on- 
ly in choosing such persons as do entirely love and will 
diligently promote the common good, but also in yielding 
unto them all due honor and obedience in their lawful ad- 
ministrations, not beholding in them the ordinariness of 
their persons, but God's ordinance for your good ; nor being 
like the foolish multitude, who more honor the gay coat 



13 

than either the virtuous mind of the man, or the glorious 
ordinance of the Lord. But you know better things, and 
that the image of the Lord's power and authorif/j, which the 
magistrate beareth, is honorable, in liow mean persons so- 
ever. And this duty you both may the more willingly and 
ought the more conscionably to perform, because you are, 
at least for the present, to have only them for your ordina- 
ry governors which yourselves shall make choice of for that 
work."* 

So far from there having been any religious purpose in 
founding the colonies of the Carolinas, there was no settled 
minister of religion in North Carolina, nor a house of wor- 
ship, until more than forty years after its settlement be- 
gan. It will show the character of that colony in other re- 
spects also, when I say that it had no court house until 
twenty years later, while for the blessing of a printing 
press it waited nearly a century.f 

The Preamble to the famous Charters for the Caroli- 
nas, drawn up for the Proprietaries by one no less famous 
than John Locke, the philosopher, or at least with his aid, 
sets forth the motives for forming the fundamental consti- 
tution of Carolina as being "the interests of the proprie- 
tors," the desire of "a government most agreeable to mon- 
archy," and '"'the dread of a numerous democracy T Nothing 
is said of religious and moral aims, or of the ecjual and gen- 
eral rights of the people. Accordingly Locke's charter, 
drawn by him in concert with Lord Shaftesbury, establish- 
ed three orders of Nobility for the young Kingdom of Car- 
olina, where there were as yet but a handful of people. 
These were styled Barons, Cassiques and Landgraves.^ 
The land was divided so that two-fifths went to the proprie- 
tors and the nobility. Property was made the basis of po- 

* Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims 95. 

t Bancroft, Vol. 2. p. 153, 164. 

X Ramsay's History of South Carolina. 



14 

iitical power and privilege, no man being eligible to the 
provincial parliament who was not possessed of a free- 
hold estate of five hundred acres. Each Baron was to 
have twelve thousand, and every Landgrave forty-eight 
thousand acres. The bulk of the people were to be serfs 
of the great hereditary proprietors or the wealthy nobles, 
and it was decreed that, like slaves of a later day, the chil- 
dren should remain in the same condition as their parents. 
There was to be no possibility to the mass of the people 
of rising above the condition of serfs. African slavery was 
also distinctly anticipated and provided for, as we might 
suppose it would be in a State begun and founded upon such 
principles, and the master's authority was declared absolute. 
The spirit of this feudal and aristocratic system was so far 
carried out, that they were to have in addition to courts 
for the ordinary purposes of justice, a court for the cogni- 
zance of "ceremonies and pedigrees"of "fashions and sports.* 

Happily this feudal charter was never fully established. 
Other influences besides gain and profligacy early gained 
such a foothold that the selfish policy of the Carolina pro- 
prietors was resisted more or less strenuously, and after a 
contest of forty or fifty years the attempt to bring the peo- 
ple under their arbitrary power was abandoned. But the 
character of those foremost in settling the Carolinas, though 
it could not control, did make its impress upon those colo- 
nies, an impress visible even now.f 

Such were the men by whom and the spirit in which the 
Carolinas were settled. The proprietors were not, like our 
Carver and Bradford and Winslow and Winthrop and Hop- 
kins, men who were of and with the people, ready to brave 
all the hardships of the wilderness and of the beginning of 
a new social and political state, bringing the ministers of 
religion with them, men who, like Cotton and Davenport, 

* Bancroft, 2, p. 149. 

t See Olmstead, Seaboard Slave States, 493-8 605. 



15 

had o-raccd the pulpits of London and the Universities; but 
profligate courtiers, living in luxury three thousand miles 
away, aiding the debaucheries of a dissolute king and in- 
tent only upon pleasure and gain, regardless of the inter- 
ests of their colonists. 

What would New England have been, nay, what would 
the whole Country have been, had such been its founders 
and such the principles upon which they acted ? Have we 
not reason to think that the record of our history would 
have been very different from Avhat it is ; and have we not 
reason to lift up the heart with thanksgiving to-day, from 
the midst of these churches and school-houses, our equal 
privileges and laws, our free and enlightened press, our gen- 
eral intelligence and thrift, and bless God that our founders 
were the signers of the compact in the cabin of the xMay- 
flower and not the greedy courtier's or decayed and prof- 
ligiite cavaliers of King James or King Charles ? 

4. I name as another occasion for thanksgiving to-day, 
the War in which we are now engaged. 

Your attention has been occupied to such an extent al- 
ready that I must be brief upon this point, though one up- 
on which it was my design to dwell at some length. 

It may possibly surprise some that T should name Civil 
War as a cause of thanksgiving. But I religiously believe 
it, in the present instance, to be such. Not of itself and 
taken simply as War. No one can be thankful to God 
for that. Bloodshed is not a thing to rejoice in. But tak- 
en as a cause, an agency, and not as an effect, not as a re- 
sult, I do think this war a matter of rejoicing, and that it 
is to be one of the things to be remembered in our history 
with joy. 

The time has come to revise our notions of war and to 
change our view of it somewhat- The time has come for 
us to infuse into our religion even a more sturdy spirit. 
We have misinterpreted the gospel of peace and have gone 



16 

faster than God in bringing on the millcnial day when war 
shall cease. We have expunged a large portion of the Old 
Testament, and have forgotten that Christ himself declared 
that he came not to send peace but a sword. The ulti- 
mate result of the gospel will be, undoubtedly, to estab- 
lish peace among men. But until we come nearer to the 
grand consummation than we are yet, there will be wars 
and strifes. The very opposition of Christ's peaceful spir- 
it and reign to the wrathful, vengeful spirit of unsanctified 
men, will cause them to array themselves in battle against 
the right and the good. And they that take the sword 
must perish by the sword. When brutal men will not lis- 
ten to the argument of reason, and when they assault rea- 
son with violence, there is often nothing left but to use the 
argument of force, or let truth and goodness be overthrown. 
Isaiah says, "The Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the 
battle," and God does not hesitate to tell us that He goes 
with some armies ; that they are his chosen instruments of 
good. 

So I believe that the present war has come in the way 
of divine providence and appointment, not only to punish 
us for our sins, but also to be the instrument of preserving 
the liberty and the life of our nation, and of making our 
liberty and om life purer and nobler and more precious 
than before. 

The very advantages accruing to us of the North and 
largely to the whole Nation from our puritan ancestry, had 
given us an unparalleled prosperity, in which at length, by 
a perversion of good, we had so far departed from the char- 
acter of the fathers as to put gain for godliness. We had 
become so eager in the pursuit of wealth, that we were be- 
come very indifferent to principle and careless of the claims 
of morality. Our character as a people was rotting down. 
Only let our gains increase and we cared little by what 
meauF. The great struggle of life was to outstrip each 



17 

other ill the chase of the golden prize. An<l in proportion as 
any were successful iu the pursuit of ij^aiti they seemed to 
become forgetful or disregardful of higher but less materi- 
al claims and interests'. Liberty had ceased to be an ideal 
in many minds. We could even be slave-holders, if the 
road to wealth led that way. At least we could see a sys- 
tem of slavery, contradicting the fundamental charter of 
our national existence, grow, like a great cancer on the 
body politic, eating out the very vitals of the nation, and 
pay no attention to it, or say it was no concern of ours, if 
only we could heap up our gains, or if to sny or do any- 
thing against it seemed likely to injure our pecuniary inter- 
ests. We were, in short, becoming a very sordid people. 
The national spirit was becoming very low and material. 
There was no inspiration in us save that of gain. We had 
well nigh lost the spirit of our fathers. 

And it needed the rude shock of War, and just such a 
war as Ave are engaged in, to waken us from our state of 
moral lethargy. A foreign war would hardly have ac- 
complished the purpose. It needed to be a war that should 
hinge, as this does, on the questions of freedom, of human 
rights, and the very existence of the government; that 
should show us what a tampering with moral principle, like 
that of winking at slavery, as was done in the' formation 
of the constitution, and still more in admittinfj; new slave- 
states into the Union, might lead to. We needed such a 
war to bring us back to the feeling of the fathers. We 
needed it to reveal to our dull senses and to our blinding 
indifference the real en rraity, the unspeakable atrocity of 
human slavery. We needed to see that it is like that fa- 
bled monster that eat its own children, rather that it is a 
monster that can slay and eat its own mother. What all 
the arguments of humanity could not do in a generation, 
this war has almost done in a single Summer. The preach- 
ing of those guns that spoke from around Fort Sumter has 



18 

produced conviction of sin as hardly any preaching did be- 
fore, and it has well-nigh converted the Nation. And as 
the newest converts are apt to be the most zealous, at least 
the most demonstrative in their zeal, so now those who but 
a little while ago thought slavery none of their business 
and were equally willing to have it voted up or voted down, 
are foremost, with the sword on the field or the eloquent 
^ongue on the platform, to slay the great Dragon that has 
shaken its rattle and threatens to strike its fangs into the 
nation's life. 

Let us be thankful that God has given us something to 
arouse us to action before it is too late. We can afford 
to lose some precious lives, if such convictions and such 
awakenings are the result. They will be a holy sacrifice, 
a'^d not one martyr shall die in vain. 

But then, again, we needed such a war to awaken the 
feeling of Patriotism which ought to characterize every 
people. We had been living on so peacefully and had be- 
come so absorbed in the pursuit of gain and selfish ends, 
that we had well nigh forgotten that we had a Coimtry 
and had almost lost the sense of patriotism and the noble, 
inspiring ideals that cluster about that sense. That as- 
sault of the Rebels upon the flag that waved over the har- 
bor of Charleston, discovered to us our country almost as 
really and surprisingly as it was discovered to Columbus, 
nigh four hundred years before. 

So, too, what a happy influence is the war having in fus- 
ing the different nationalities among us into one. A com- 
mon flag to look upon,a common government to sustain,a com- 
mon liberty to fight for — German and Irish and French and 
Scotch have forgotten the narrow prejudices of nativity, and 
the dominant feeling now in all hearts is American. Thus 
one of the perils of our civil and S(?cial state is removed 
and an encouraging promise of good secured. We shall 
feel the benefits of this fusion in the next generation as we 
can not now. 



19 

And then what deeds of Heroism has the war already 
given occasion to and hung up as so many historic pictures 
in the temple of our freedom, to be a perpetual inspiration 
of what is noblest and best. England has her Westminster 
Abbey, from the walls and columns of which look down the 
sculptured statues of her heroes, wliether in arms, in arts or 
letters; the pale, cold marble speaking from thirty gener- 
ations past to all the generations to come. Since the Rev- 
olution we have had few self-sacrificing patriots to enshrine 
within our memorial fane. Our great men have been for 
the most part self-seekers not self-sacrificers. We needed 
some who should inspire us with a higher ambition than the 
love of place or self, and to kindle us with the sight of un- 
selfish devotion. And now we have them. ■ Anderson and 
his devoted band, holding their ground within beleaguered, 
flame-girt Sumter, — Baker, heading that forlorn hope by 
the banks of the Potomac, — Lyon, and Zagonyi with his 
body-guard, at Springfield, replying so effectively to slan- 
ders, and emulating the heroes of Thermopylre, — these and 
others unnamed, living or dead, are our heroes, enshrined 
in the temple of the nation's heart, to be joined with oth- 
ers and, perhaps nobler still, to be inspiriting examples and 
ideals that shall lift us above the sordid life of luxury and 
gainful traffic and selfish indulgence. 

We needed also something to quicken in us th6 sense of 
Law and Governmental Authority. We had grown up 
from our small beginning, so like a family living in hap- 
py concord and giving little occasion for the display of the 
restraints of household authority ,that Law had become more 
a name and a thing of constitutions and statute-books, than 
a living power and presence felt by us as the safeguard of 
the good and a restraint upon the evil-disposed. We had 
become really a lawless people, held together by no bond of 
authority, but, almost like so many grains of sand, each one 
was a law unto himself, and all the sport of every gust of 



20 

passion or inclination of, prejudice or interest. And the 
matter was f^rowing worse and worse continually. It need- 
ed something to show us the indispensableness and proper 
office of government. The rebels also were encouraged by 
the almost entire absence of the manifestations of authori- 
ty among us, and by the knowledge that there was so lit- 
tle recognition of authorit}^ and law in the thoughts of the 
people at large. But their defiance of authority has called 
that power from its hiding place, while it has shown us its 
supreme necessit}^ This war will give a value to law among 
us and a respect for it which never existed before. The 
rigid restraints of thecamp also will be ver}^ salutary in this 
regard. Half a million of loyal men are thus at school to- 
day learning the lessons of authority and obedience. They 
will come back to us by and by and help to infuse into all 
ranks and occupations a respect for authorit}^ and law 
which we have greatly needed, while by their action in the 
field they will also inculcate the lessons of obedience upon 
those now in rebellion and upon the Avhole country, in a 
way that shall have an abiding impression. 

There are other fruits of good connected with this war, 
which I must not take time to mention. But those already 
named are enough to stimulate our feelings of thankfulness 
to-day. There is light behind the cloud. Nay, there is 
light on tlie cloud. Its blackness is even now gilded with 
the promise and the presence of good. The war is already 
blessing us, and by the favor of God, it is yet to bless us 
and to bless the world greatly. It will give to death some 
of our dear sons and brothers. It will create pecuniary em- 
barrassment. But it will break with its crushing blows the 
chains that now hold four million of human beings in bon- 
dage. It will do for us in this respect more than any had 
dared to hope. It will treat, with the sharp surgery of the 
sword, the cancer which has inflamed the whole social and 
political system. 



21 

It will infuse into us all n nobler .inii better sense of lib- 
erty. It will dignif}" and idealize our public and private 
life, and set firm the bonds of rightful authority and govern- 
ment, and so prepare us for augmented growth and prosper- 
ity. Let us thank God for the War. 

5. And, finally and chief of all, let us thank him anew to- 
day for what I need only to name, the Gospel of on?- Lord 
and Savior. 

Beyond all those blessings which have been mentioned 
and others not alluded to, is the precious revelation which 
God has made of himself in Christ as our everlasting f^ither 
and friend. Without this all others would be of little 
worth, even if they could exist at all. And while this ex- 
ceeds them all, reaching out its eternal hopes and pledges 
of good to us, it heightens at the same time the value of the 
blessings which we all prize so highly now. While there- 
fore we bless God for the favor which attends our worldly 
concerns ; for health ; for the fruits of the earth, replenish- 
ing our basket and our store ; for our pious, intelligent and 
self-sacrificing ancestry ; and for the good which he min- 
gles with the evils of a state of civil war ; let us not for- 
get to thank him for the life and immortality brought to 
light through the gospel and the hopes which in Christ 
lead beyond and above all the wants and cares and sins 
and strifes of this mortal state. 



6' 



